Italian Wines
By Wine Atlas, Wednesday 22 February 2006 :: Wine - Italy :: #108 :: rss
This is one of those good news, bad news stories. The good news is that the quality of Italian wine is improving at a palate-pleasing rate, but the bad news is that the prices are rising even faster than the quality is improving.
It is not unusual to find the great Barolos and Brunellos selling for more than $100, and when you see unknown, supposed "Super-Umbrians" heading north of $50, things are getting a little ridiculous.
It was, after all, only 30 years ago that Italian wine was seen as nothing more than cheap plonk, wine that came in straw-covered bottles, the ubiquitous fiasci of so many college dorm rooms, and was confined, in the U.S. at least, to Italian restaurants with red and white checkered tablecloths.
As late as 1990, when Sergio Esposito, owner of the Italian Wine Merchants wine shop in New York City, decided to concentrate his career exclusively on Italian wines, his friends and colleagues thought he was out of his mind. It was seen as professional suicide. These days, however, his shop is thriving, there are hundreds of Italian wines that sell for more than $100, and there's hardly a decent restaurant in America that doesn't have at least some Italian wines on its list.
Last year, Italian wines accounted for 30% of the list at Union Square Café, one of Manhattan's most popular non-Italian restaurants. Now it is 40% and still climbing. Richard Russell, general manager and wine director, attributes this to the fact that "more customers are taking Italian wine more seriously and don't think of it as something to drink with spaghetti anymore."
Continue reading: forbes.com
